Teddy Roosevelt called the presidential podium a “bully pulpit.” Tonight (12/16/2012) we heard President Obama appeal to the country for it to do something to stop these mass murders that have been happening around America… four in this year alone. This latest massacre of children in Newtown, Connecticut was horrendous, but I hold that  the answer to this problem is not more laws, which seemed to be what he alluded to and will be putting forth in the days ahead. He quoted scripture from the New Testament all through his speech, but fell short of calling for the only answer that will ever make a difference, a nationwide repentance before God and a heart change that God desires to give us all if we will just “humble ourselves, and pray, and seek God’s face, and turn from our wicked ways.” The law never has had power to change anyone’s heart, but according to Paul it only gives power to more sin (see Romans 7:9-11). Only surrendering to Jesus Christ and seeking His new heart within can change us for this is the very essence of the New Covenant (see Hebrews ch. 8).

Connecticut has the fifth strongest gun laws in the nation and these laws did not prevent this mass killing. Already some are calling for a tough and comprehensive Federal gun control to stop wrong doers from just going across state lines to purchase their weapons in states with weaker laws. Guns, like drugs, are not stopped at borders or by laws. If the US adopts laws even as strong as those in Canada, gun runners, as it is with drug runners, will start a new “land office” business across our porous borders and will have a whole new way to become rich in a new black market. Remember, prohibition only made drinking all that more vogue in the 20’s and 30’s and made the criminals rich.

Contrast Obama’s speech tonight with that of Abe Lincoln at the end of the Civil War (for that is what we are seeing already in this county on our streets as evil spirits pour forth from hell and inhabit the unrepentant and the weak)…

“It is the duty of nations…to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins…with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy…The awful calamity of civil war… may be but a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins.”  Lincoln continued: “We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven…We have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown.  But we have forgotten God.  We have forgotten the gracious Hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.” Lincoln concluded: “Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! “It behooves us then to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins and to pray for…forgiveness.” ~ During the Civil War, after issuing the Emancipation Proclamation, President Lincoln called for a “National Day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer for March 30, 1863,

Compare this part of Lincoln’s speech…

“We have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious Hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.”

With what Jesus said to the church of Laodicea…

“And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things says the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God; I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot: I would that you were cold or hot. So then because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth. Because you say, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and know not that you are wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked…” (Rev 3:14-17 KJ2000)

And what did Jesus say was the remedy to this myopic narcissistic problem in the church?

“I counsel you to buy of me gold tried in the fire [trials and tribulation], that you may be rich; and white clothing, that you may be clothed [in His righteousness], and that the shame of your nakedness does not appear; and anoint your eyes with eye salve [the Holy Spirit within our hearts], that you may see. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.” (Rev 3:18-19 KJ2000)

We are experiencing as a nation the chastening of the Lord as Satan is allowed to run havoc in our borders because of our great apostasy as His church (See 2 Thes. ch. 2). The question is will we repent? For even His “church” sees itself for the most part as doing just fine as we go from one church program to another with no thought of listening to the voice of God to see what HE wants us to do or asking Him how HE sees us. The salt has lost its flavor and it is now being trodden under the feet of carnal men. WE, the opulent, self-presuming church, are the ones who are “wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.”

Lord grant to your people a true spirit of repentance. Arise, Oh Lord, in our hearts as the Day Star that you are and shine into our hearts and first change us as your church and secondly as a nation as we truly return to you as our Lord and Savior as our only sufficiency. If necessary strip us of our wealth that we trust in just as you are stripping us of our peace and are stripping us of freedom. For the only true freedom we can have is found as we walk in obedience to what the Spirit IS saying to the churches. Amen.